Wilderness of Eggplant and heritage tomato plants in the poly tunnel -
fruiting much slower and less for this time than in previous years but lovely stuff is to be had on harvest and we anticipate much more to come with predicted upcoming warmer, more stable temps.
Cherry tomatoes in the field.
Here we are, technically in the early days of autumn or what is often more a late summer for these parts this time of year, but we are experiencing a mixture of warmer summer'ish and much cooler late autumn weather - as in a few days of each per week (e.g. today 6 - 12 deg C & the prev. 4 days not much better!!). This has been going on for around 3 weeks now, following what was a couple of weeks of warm-hot and humid weather with mild-warm nights - i.e. good growing weather. Normally February is the only month we can count on for full-blown summer weather!
A Qld Blue pumpkin, about the size of a rockmelon and as such way small for late Feb.
However, the pumpkins we have coming on look great and might surprise us yet. Previous years we have lost many to no rain - fancy!
We are presently wishing for the Indian Summer effect for best results with our now ripening abundant tomatoes and all those other summer/autumn crops we have on the go, which have been finally kicking on, slowly but surely, as we hope to get them to full fruition before say May. We even got a frost one morning this week, which is un-seasonally early and less than helpful - sheesh!! You really need to be an optimist to be a farmer, that's for sure - it's not that you don't get down on your uppers (& any farmer who denies this is fibbing) BUT you inherently need to have a sense of all things passing and of good times to come.
Toms and Tim - a couple of our luscious Grosse Lisse...see the tomatoes are mostly doing rather well, they all just need enough warm and non-frost time over the next month in order to all get to ripening and onto our plates.
We estimate this summer here has consisted of probably about 2 weeks-worth of summer days/nights if you add them together, with lots of mild spring weather (o.k. & pleasant but not overly productive) and a considerable amount of uncharacteristic humidity, which can aid growth but also precipitates some disease, like downy mildew on zucchini plants. The repeated drop of overnight temperatures to below 8 deg C is particularly problematic for all the summer 'night shade' vegetables we all love (toms., zucchs, cucs, capsicum, eggplants...), as these do their growing during the night and if it's too cool at night, well they just sit there and don't fruit or fruit at a much slower rate, even in the poly tunnels unless you have climate control mechanisms, which we don't. So, anyway, you get the gist...it's been too cold and/or wet much of the time and generally unpredictable to sum up!
Thankfully, the last few weeks have never the less been much more productive at Angelica Organic Farm, see below last weekend's farmers' market offerings at Abbotsford Convent Slow Food f.m. and you can expect this and more this Saturday at Daylesford F.M. - Daylesford Primary School, Vincent St Daylesford (9am - 1pm) - be nice to see you there!
Rainbow chard, heritage carrots and eggplants.
Lebanese Cucumbers...freshly picked and crispy.
Sexy zucchini flowers and heritage eggplants.
Various herbage...
Yellow button squash, zucchinis.
Beautiful green, shapely 'Italian' zucchs and tender, sweet yellow zucchs.
A mix of new season colourful tomates - cherry, yellow pear, heritage varieties and Grosse Lisse.
We also have a range of scrummy potatoes coming along and loads of beetroots and more heritage carrots coming up AND seed going in the ground before it gets too cold for the little beauties to grow, grow, grow...Golden shallots and Jerusalem artichokes are planning a come back for next year folks, as of course is our gorgeous gourmet red rocambole garlic!
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